Monday, November 26, 2012

Urgent ... is to be happy!

There is a tendency – continuous and ever growing - for people to think
that everything is urgent. Everything is for yesterday - as if today only
serves to chase the time spent.

In most cases, the deadlines fall upon us mercilessly, demanding
personal sacrifices in order to be met. And often, we find, after spending
several sleepless nights, that which has kept us awake is no longer important -
for our customers, for our bosses, or whoever put us in that untenable
situation of subduing time that is almost always invincible.

There is a clear connection between the urgent nature of things and the
things of the ego: many find that the more urgent is the task at hand, the more
important people they are. And this supposed urgency seems to give them the
right to invade our lives, anytime, interrupting our sleep, late at night, on
Saturdays and on Sundays... Perhaps because their personal lives are empty and
lonely. They forget that there are a lot of happy people. A bunch of people
occupied with the sum of their affections and their chores.

This modern urgency only tends to get
worse, with the increasing hunger for immediacy, and the need to want everything now, which worsens with
the online world. And it is easy to recognize the prisoners of this virtual
world - busy with their phones or tablets, as if they were always doing
something important, as trivial as it is. They have a latent nervousness that
they express in the vacant and restless look in the eyes. And they are very
clumsy in their nervousness!

Today everything is urgent, but almost
nothing is urgent. The urgent things of today are exactly the same as always!

Thousands and thousands of things remain
that are not urgent, but we let ourselves be imprisoned by these modern false
emergencies - the idea that if things are not done at that time - at that exact
and precious moment - something terrible might happen! But what can happen that
might be so terrible? Really terrible? Nothing! Nothing happens! Literally
nothing!

These false emergencies often are a
reflection of personal neuroses. A reflection of attention-hungry egos, egos
wanting to be important, but they are just sad.

There are few urgent things, truly urgent
things.

Urgent is the struggle to save a life!

This is the case of surgeons, especially cardiac surgeons. Those who
hold the heart of people in their hands like little gods, those who give life
back with their hidden gifts, often beyond pure technique! These beings deal
with urgency on a daily basis, and there's nobody more serene than them - well,
maybe just the monks, but they do not mingle with the common dilemmas, nor do
they have beating hearts in their quiet hands.

Urgent is to be happy! Urgent is kissing those we love and watch over
our children’s sleep - because time has in itself an urgency that makes
everything unrepeatable, it takes away everything, it drags us through life
whether we like it or not. And we are here for this - to live this life,
measured by the love we give, because that's what will keep us alive in the
memory of the living.